For the more adventurous people of the world, there are lots of creepy places that need exploring. But, even for the less adventurous of us, creepy places seem to find their way into our lives without looking for them. These are some of the most haunting places people have experienced, whether they wanted to or not.
#1 The Call Is Coming From Inside The Pool
I worked as a night auditor at an old hotel. One night at around 2am, I got a phone call from the pool room, which was supposed to be closed. I picked up the phone to answer and all I heard was very heavy breathing. I hung up the phone to check the cameras, and all the lights are on in the pool room. So I go down the hallway to kick out whoever it is in there.
As I get close to the glass door, it’s so cold that I can see my breath, the door is completely fogged over, and all the lights are out. I open the door and the light above me comes on, because they’re motion sensor lights. I am looking around but I don't see anything. Then the light comes on across the pool from me, but again, nothing is there.
Then every light in a path begins to light up around one side of the pool as if something is walking towards me. I ran out of there so fast and locked myself in my manager's office and stayed until sunrise—but the worst was yet to come. I had played it off in my head as insects causing the motion sensor lights to go off.
I was telling my manager about my whole spooky experience, thinking he would get a good laugh. When I told him about the phone call from the pool, he didn't laugh at all. He asked me if I was 100% positive the caller ID said the pool room, and I said yeah. Then he told me there hasn't been a phone in the pool room for 30 years.
I told him there was no way, because that would be impossible. I knew what I saw on the call display. He told me to go look for myself. I looked and there was no phone. I didn't believe in the supernatural at all before that. But to this day, no matter how many ways I try to rationalize it, I just can't. It is completely unexplainable.
#2 It Is Brain Surgery
Operating room for brain surgery. It's freezing cold, they wheel you up to this stainless steel bed with a cage you put your head in. They tighten down clamps on your head so it can't move. They then knock you out. You wake up multiple times over a four and a half hour surgery, semi-conscious, eyes closed but you can say, "I hear you guys," or snap your fingers. You could also hold a finger up like "waiter," and the anesthesiologist hits you with a dose.
After they're done, they poke a giant needle into different facial muscles to make sure they didn't break anything. Poking it into a muscle causes subconscious flinching and they look at the muscle group flinching to make sure each category is still rigged up. I had a bunch of scabs and taped cotton balls across my face and scalp. Then they seal up your skull and sign off on it. It's morbid, terrifying, and cold. But, it can give you your life back. I spent two nights in the hospital and was driving to work seven days later, feeling like a million bucks.
#3 Not-So Restful Stop
I went to a rest stop at 1:00 a.m. outside Springfield, Illinois a few years back. I went to the restroom and there was a red mess everywhere. I don’t know what happened, but it looked like something really heavy went down in there. Not going to lie, I’ve never high-tailed it out of somewhere so quickly before.
#4 Third Bedroom
When I was a kid, we lived in my dad's old house from when he was a kid. It was one of the oldest houses in town and had been there since the 1800s, but had been redone a few times. The house had three bedrooms: a master that used to be a screened in porch, a regular room, and a room off to the side that was barely big enough for a twin bed.
When my dad was about 11, his older brother passed and they had his coffin put in that room for the viewing. When my grandfather passed about 10 years later, his was put there, too. When I was born, my grandmother offered the house to my parents, as she'd gotten remarried, so they took it for $30 a month.
However, that room always creeped me out for some reason growing up. I didn't like going in there. When I was older and started renting the house from my grandma myself, that's when my dad told me about the viewings. It was still a creepy room and I only kept things that I didn't use on a regular basis in there!
#5 Haunted Morgue
One year I worked in a haunted house inside a building that used to be a funeral home. The morgue was downstairs and still had the drawers. My job was to lay in the drawer and pop out when people walked by. I had to lay in a cramped drawer, in the dark, on cold metal, with flashes of lights and screams in the distance. It was probably the creepiest place. I scared so many people, including a middle-school kid who straight-up ruined his pants and a college chick who did, too. So, it was kind of worth it.
#6 Crypts in France
The crypt of a church in Bayeux, France. I was there on a school trip and we could choose whether to go to this historically old church, or see the Bayeux tapestry. I chose the church. The cathedral was built in the 11th century, but the crypt was only rediscovered in 1412. So, I was down there by myself, taking pictures, and after a couple of minutes I started feeling downright nauseous. Like, “I’m going to get sick right here” nauseous. I went upstairs to get some air and the feeling instantly went away. It really creeped me out. When I went down with the group afterwards, I felt totally fine.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
#7 He Can Live With Us
I was on a family vacation to Atlanta in about 1972. We went to visit some of my grandma’s cousins. They were twin sisters who never married and were in their 80’s. The house was in a rundown neighbourhood; from the street, you'd think it was abandoned. There was an overgrown yard, part of the roof caved in, and boarded up windows. Inside, it was all antiques, furniture from the ‘30s, was slowly deteriorating and looked as though they hadn't dusted in years. Wallpaper was peeling and old portraits had half fallen.
I looked up to the second floor from the stairs and only saw cobwebs and collapsed ceilings. They said they hadn't been up there in years. I also definitely heard rat noises. They both looked and lived like ghosts, and seemed half-mad, very civil and proper, but off. As an eight-year-old, I was terrified, especially when one of them joked, "You should leave him here. He can live with us." I burst into tears, and we left.
#8 New Rules on Laughing
When I was in Iceland, I walked past a school at roughly 9:00-ish in the morning and heard children laughing. It was very dark out and I didn’t know I was near a school. The combination of the sudden sound of children’s laughter coupled with the darkness created one of the very few occasions I felt unsettled like that. Kids should only be allowed to laugh in groups during daylight, in plain sight.
#9 Boarding House
I had a friend who cleaned out and sold foreclosed homes for a living. He once took me on a ride to a house he had to photograph for the bank after it went into foreclosure. From the moment we got there, it was unsettling. It was in the area of a ski resort and the neighborhood was wealthy, but once we stepped inside, it was clear that it had been used as a kind of boarding house for resort staff.
We saw that there were numbers outside each of the bedroom doors, large closets, and weird spaces turned into bedrooms. The place was also unbelievably filthy. There were black garbage bags everywhere, pizza boxes, and empty bottles. It looked like it was clearly a party house for staff, but recently abandoned.
At one point, I was on the ground floor, and my friend was in the basement. I suddenly got full body chills. I was standing in the kitchen and there was a bathroom next to it with the door closed. I somehow knew that there was someone hiding in that bathroom. At the same instant, my friend called me down to the basement where he had found a back corner, which had been converted into another sleeping area.
There was a television still on, just showing static, and cutlery on a crate next to the mattress. That was the moment I stepped directly behind my 6’4”, 300-pound friend and told him we had to get out of there. I’m pretty sure the home was being used as an against the law boarding house for undocumented resort workers. I honestly felt bad for the terrified kid who was still squatting in the basement, but I sure as heck didn’t want to find him.
#10 Sprickets and Skeletons
My old house. About five years ago, I was living in a town just outside of Washington. The house was a short, two-story house with a basement that was built in the ‘50s. The whole house has a weird vibe to it, not exactly scary, but unsettling. In 2011, the year that we moved in, the guy that built the house stopped by.
He told us that he built the house with his dad and three brothers in 1952. During the building, they found a few skeletons while they were digging out the driveway and called the authorities. Turns out, they were union service men from the Civil Conflict who had most likely been injured during the Battle of Bull Run. They were then probably buried as the union army marched back to DC. Also the basement was unfinished, flooded constantly, and had a spricket infestation.
#11 Abandoned Six Flags
I explored the abandoned Six Flags in New Orleans. It was closed for Katrina and never opened again. While my friends and I were there, we found everything essentially as it was left four years prior. We saw computers in the admin office, tickets in the admission booth, even jars of pickles in the concession stands.
#12 Remaining Files
An abandoned mental institution in New Jersey. My friend brought us there, so we wandered the grounds and went in a few buildings, including the morgue. The offices still had patient files and the pediatric area still had kids’ artwork. It had been abandoned for about eight years at that point. It was really creepy and also really sad.
#13 Price of Pickles
There's this place around my town called the Pickle Factory or something like that. It's this huge brick building with a single tiny window and a small entry door. They are very explicit on not using any cameras. When you get in, it's a foldable table with a single light in the room. There's a sign and it gives you the price for the pickles. That's the whole place, and my friends think I'm insane. It's honestly just a really sketchy place.
#14 Fields of Cambodia
I went to the fields in Cambodia. It was one of the most harrowing places I’ve visited. Walking around and seeing the mass graves and pits was very sobering. They have glass vases filled with clothes and bones. You can just feel how much suffering happened there and it’s heartbreaking. I visited after a period of heavy rainfall, so as we were wandering around, we could spot clothes in the ground.
#15 Hospitals in Italy
Me and my pal visited the basement of an abandoned hospital in Italy. It was full of strange stuff from the hospital stash. We also found some poor bird's feathers, as it is known that people probably used the hospital for rituals. It was totally impossible to see anything without a torch. I was holding the camera so Everything got creepier when we started hearing footsteps and voices that probably came from some homeless guys that lived in the hospital. It was really a mind-blowing experience.
#16 Tholos of El Romeral
The Tholos of El Romeral in Spain. It's a stone tomb almost 4000 years old that was used as a burial site for centuries. There is a long corridor that ends in a small, low, circular chamber. It's quite far from the city and it was late afternoon, so I was alone there. I couldn't help but feel that I wasn't alone in that chamber, that I had awakened something sleeping there that was right behind me.
Eventually, I had to go out to make sure that the world was still out there. On the outside, it looks like a small hill with a circle of cypress trees. Two French tourists were there and walked the circle, clockwise. I tried to walk it counterclockwise and it just didn't feel right. I gave in, walked it clockwise and it felt like it made sense. It felt like I was taking part in an ancient ritual. It wasn't scary, but it was definitely unsettling.
#17 Weird Bathroom
There was one bathroom in our high school that hadn’t been updated while the others were fine. This one felt like the 1940s and some genius put the urinal literally right next to the sink. Also, the stall walls were way too small and basically anyone could look over it and see the urinal. Only bathroom that I will walk away from and refuse to use.
#18 Man in the Woods
When I was younger, I used to walk almost every weekend in the countryside with my parents and the dog. One day, when I was eight, we went through a wooded area and found a guy. We didn’t even know the exact location of that place, so we couldn’t call the authorities. So, we ran until we found a house. The owner was one of the closest friends of the man. He was apparently missing for three days after his girlfriend left him. I never went to those woods again.
#19 Mausoleum Exploring
I was exploring the mausoleum at one of the oldest cemeteries in my city. I've done this many times and it was always deserted. The mausoleum has subterranean levels and I was down in the lowest level, taking pictures and poking around. Then I heard a noise like someone humming. It was very quiet, but definitely humming.
I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I told myself it was time to get out of there. Then, I couldn't remember where the way back up was and started to panic because I could hear the humming get louder. I went around a corner and nearly knocked down a woman who was also exploring. I don't know which of us screamed louder. After we both calmed down and had a good laugh, she said it was the first time she ever encountered another person in the mausoleum after exploring for years.
#20 The Chambers
For me, it would have to be the chambers at Auschwitz. I went there during the off-season and walked through by myself. You could see the fake showerheads lining the ceiling. Thinking about the tens of thousands of people who perished right in that spot terrified me so much. Honestly, I felt almost paralyzed.
#21 Sister’s Quinceñera
My sister had her Quinceñera in an old church with a graveyard in the back. While setting up the decorations, I found a hidden panel on the floor that led to the basement. It was super dark and had very old tools in it. There was a small space dug out so that you could stand up, but the rest of the space had to be crawled through.
I didn’t want to get my suit dirty, so I kept in the dugout. But the worst part was that when panic finally set in for me, I realized the floor panel was too high up for me to reach and escape through. I rushed through the available tools to see if anything could help me get out, but I found nothing. Eventually, someone handed me a ladder from the surface. But until then, I just had to wait and watch my back so that nothing took me by surprise.
#22 Movie Set
A few hours from my house, there’s a large waterfall. Near this waterfall is an abandoned western ghost town movie set. It’s actually quite old. The fence is rusted through, but for some reason, some of the props, costumes, and even a camera or two were left behind. Thinking back on it, it’s weird as heck to know it was there.
#23 Dark Cave
My girlfriend and I went on a cave tour in Minnesota to see natural cave formations. It was a small group of five, so the tour guide was fairly intimate. At one point, he casually suggested we all turn off our flashlights after we already got halfway through the cave. Well, we did. We sat there quietly for a minute in pitch darkness, the kind of darkness you wouldn't even see out in rural farmland. No stars. No nothing. We were in a cave.
#24 Going Exploring
Forest Haven is an abandoned insane asylum in Maryland. It’s posted as no trespassing and technically patrolled by guards, but in reality is very easy to get into. There are 22 buildings on the property, all just wide open and abandoned, covered in collapsed ceiling tiles, broken glass, and graffiti. There’s still furniture in some of the rooms. If you delve deep enough into the property, you can still find patient records that were left behind when they closed.
We actually found a stack of patient files in a dark, windowless room. It was so surreal, reading about a man with “a history of schizophrenia” who “talks incessantly.” This patient had a one-page, handwritten summary for every year that he had been in the hospital. They all started out, “Kenny is an almost 45-year old white male with a history of schizophrenia. He has been at Forest Haven for five years.” Only the age and duration changed from page to page. The first one was dated 1973 and the last page in his file was a printed memorial flyer showing he passed in September, 1990. The facility was ordered to close in 1974, but didn’t actually close its doors until 1991. In its last year of operation, there were nine more tragedies at the asylum. Kenny was one of them.
The creepiest part? The patient who’s file I randomly opened up to. It was in the middle of wet, moldering files, sitting on the corner of a collapsing desk in an interior room of an abandoned basement. He shared the same first and middle name as my significant other. Just a weird, creepy coincidence in a cold, wet, creepy place.
#25 Earnestine and Hazels
Earnestine and Hazels in Memphis. It was an old blues bar that Ray Charles played at back in the day. Prior to that, it was a adult place at one point, run by two sisters named Earnestine and Hazel. Later, we found out that the place was reportedly haunted. Well, we eventually ventured upstairs, which still looked like an old boarding house with dark-colored beadboard on the walls and ceiling.
It was also darkly lit with empty rooms filled with dim colored lights, broken pianos, jukeboxes, odd furniture, broken desks, etc. The upstairs bathroom had a claw foot tub with a single red light bulb in there. There was one door closed and you could tell someone was in there. I just figured it was the office or something.
The end of the hallway had an upstairs bar that my friends and I chilled at for a while and left soon after. A few months later, I read about the owner, who lived upstairs (and was probably who I saw in that upstairs room), passed in that very room. It was a very cool place but I will probably never go back there.
#26 Mother and Boy
I went to an interview shortly out of grad school. I’m a librarian, and it was a cataloguing job. It was located outside of the city, on a remote country road. There were no other buildings or houses located nearby, though the address was a house. Weird, but I was desperate enough to not turn around and drive away.
I got up to the porch, and there was a very large dog waiting in the mudroom. I knocked on the door, and out comes this Norman Bates type. He started touring me around the main floor of the house, which was set up as an office. He explained to me that “mother” was the supervisor (seriously, you can’t make this up).
The place was musty, and has a Bates Motel meets The Office decor. By the time he took me out the back deck to very dirty antique deck furniture, I thought, “What am I doing here? Am I going to be in a bad situation?” Then, he gave me a test for cataloguing, which was the most normal thing he asked thus far.
Once I finished it, he explained, “Mother’s rules. She’s super strict about a lot of things, but especially the dog. No complaints about dogs, ever.” I went back through the house with him, and sure enough, there was a photo on the wall of Mr. Bates and Mother. I got out of there, and ignored further emails from him.
#27 Childhood Attic
My own attic when I was eight years old. To me, that was easily the creepiest place I’d ever laid eyes on. I basically shut the lights off on my way out and sprinted down the steps like the ceiling was collapsing behind me. Whoever says childhood is fun and beautiful is completely wrong. Childhood is terrifying.
#28 Porcelain Figures
In a B&B in the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It was right next to a nursing home that was suspiciously silent. It was also right above the sea in October, when it was very windy and cold. The B&B owner was a super old lady with tons of porcelain figures in the house. The room she rented was on the top floor of her house. It was very creepy. We just went in to see the room out of respect to the lady and got out from there.
#29 Tiny Hallway
I was working at Livingston Mall in New Jersey in 2011. This mall is dirty behind the scenes. It was supposed to be a mall for the rich since Livingston is full of rich people, but no one came because they went to the vastly superior Short Hills Mall. One of my things is exploring new places and this was the first time I was able to explore this place. We had pallets that we needed to get rid of too, and my boss gave me the job of making them disappear.
One day, I was traversing the labyrinthine back halls of this place and I came upon a door that seemed to be in a weird place. I opened it up and peeked inside. There was, like, a 3-by-11 foot mini hall, maybe a bit longer. It was a long series of shelves with nothing on them and it seemed like this may have been part of something at some point. There were leaves on the ground, roaches both living and deceased on the shelves and floor, and a set of over hanging tube lights that had semi-functional bulbs. This thing looked and seemed straight up out of a horror film.
Amusingly, when I told my boss and showed him the place, he said, “Why am I not surprised you found a place like this?” He knew I liked exploring and it was just something I liked to do. I never found out what the place was for, but it did make a good place to stow some wooden pallets that I no longer needed.
#30 The Dollhouse
When I was in high school, it was a popular dare to go to "the dollhouse." The dollhouse was a little house in the side yard of a normal house in a neighborhood by the school. It was surrounded by lighted by so many angel statues you couldn't walk on the grass. You had to step onto paving stones arranged into a path.
It was insanely well-built, like a scaled-down version of a normal house. There was even a little air conditioner. The people who owned it never locked it, so you could go right in through the front door. At first it seemed normal, just small. There was carpeting and a set of stairs leading up to a tiny second story. The air felt stale and quiet. Then you would see them.
Dozens of dolls, all posed on small couches, standing by tiny tables, just dolls. They were maybe a meter tall and frozen as though you'd just caught them doing something. It was super creepy, but even after seeing that, you still had to walk back out past all the angel statues. Maybe the owners built it for their grandkids or something but, no thank you.
#31 Old Dirt Road
My parents’ house was in the woods and I used to love going for walks at around 11:00 p.m. on the weekends. There were some trails formed through some of the forest. So, I'd walk through and there was a long dirt road that I’d walk on with my eyes closed. It was super relaxing at the time. Now that I'm older, I realize it probably wasn't the brightest idea.
#32 Neighbor’s Cemetery
My neighbor has an old cemetery in her wooded backyard. It’s nothing too noticeable, but we all knew it was there. I saw it one time when I was really young and from then on, my friends and I either played in the street or in my backyard. I never found out who was buried there, but I know for sure it wasn’t anyone she was related to.
#33 Heebie Jeebies
The house we used to rent on the main road in our town. It was one of the oldest roads in PA. The whole house had this horrible sense of foreboding. It was especially worse on the second floor, the first room of the third floor, and in the servants’ stairwell. We would frequently hear heavy footsteps climbing up the stairs and down the hallway; they definitely sounded like a man’s footsteps.
We would also hear children’s laughter and toddler-like footsteps. There was this horrible anticipatory feeling everyone got if ever they stood at the top of the stairs. It was like someone was standing there behind them, breathing down their necks. One night, while we were on the porch with a neighbor, I went inside to grab a snack. I walked pretty quickly through the living room to the kitchen where I felt safer getting my food together.
When I came back to the porch, my husband was out of the seat he’d been sitting in, pacing and rubbing the back of his neck. He looked a little wild-eyed and was saying to our neighbor, “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything?!” Apparently, shortly after I’d walked into the house, he heard a voice that sounded like someone was pressed against the open living room window.
This voice sounded like it was whispering harshly right next to my husband’s ear. He said it was a man’s voice, that it spoke clearly, but in a language he couldn’t understand. He also said the voice sounded really angry. I’ve still never been somewhere in person that gave me the heebie-jeebies like that house.
#34 Sketchy Building
I was a maintenance guy at a college that used to be a mental hospital for 60 years. It finally closed in the mid ‘90s. Half the campus had been renovated or built right before I started. The other half was still the abandoned mental hospital. There have been two low budget horror movies filmed at this place that I know of.
The one building was pretty normal. It was where the patients had lived and it wasn’t too bad to be in. The second building was where all the treatments happened and it was sketchy. I walked in one time and found the old electric chair they used. There were also big jars of formaldehyde with things inside them. Display cases with skeletons in them were also present.
The heat and water had been shut off for approximately 10 years, so all the paint was peeling off the walls and it was completely silent in there. Sometimes you could hear squirrels scurrying on the floor above you, but that was it. I hated that building and spent as little time in it as possible the two years I worked there.
#35 Star Island
It was a bright, beautiful day in mid-summer. I was on a girl’s trip with my mother, aunt and grandmother. We decided to take a boat out to Star Island on a recommendation from my aunt's co-worker, who thought it was a cute little island. The boat ride was great. But, I stepped off the boat and instantly had a horrible feeling wash over me.
I wanted nothing more than to get back on the boat and leave, but the ladies guilted me into staying. I kept telling them it didn't feel right, there was something wrong, I didn't want to be there. They insisted I stay with them and explore the island and that I was being ridiculous. I don't know why I stayed, but soon the boat was leaving and I was stuck.
After some more guilt, I was persuaded to actually leave the dock. Grandma wanted to check out the hotel, so we headed up the hill toward this massive building. We approached by a side entrance but I couldn't bring myself to go inside. My aunt and grandmother went to explore, but my mother started to become concerned about my odd behavior and stayed outside with me.
While waiting for the hotel explorers to return, my mother and I headed for the front of the hotel. This hotel had a huge wrap-around porch. As we rounded the corner on the front side, I quickly noticed that we were very out of place. It's like we stepped back in time with the children of the corn. They all had blonde hair and blue eyes and were dressed in old fashioned clothing. I quickly headed back to the dock to wait for the boat that wouldn't return for hours.
After another round of guilt and negotiating, my mother somehow convinced me to take a walk to the far end of the island. Thankfully, all the people were hanging around the hotel, but I still had an uneasy feeling. We ended up at some rocky cliffs that I normally would have explored, but I had visions of imminent doom.
We stopped at a church and I couldn't go inside. I eventually wore everyone down and they agreed to go back to wait for the boat. We sat in the gazebo for an hour before I caught a glimpse of the boat coming back. I was on the dock waiting when it arrived. As soon as I was aboard, everything was good again. They couldn't believe how quickly my demeanor changed. There isn't enough money in the world to buy off me to go back there.
#36 Remembering the Darkness
I visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland. One of the last stops was the remnants of the crematoria where all of the bodies were burned. On the way back, you stop in one of the prisoner barracks. I remember that the day was really hot and humid. Given the temperature, a thunderstorm developed that afternoon.
For safety reasons, until the lightning warning passed, our tour group remained in these barracks. It was so dark outside, but inside was almost totally black. It was unsettling and horrible to be in there. It wasn’t for more than 20 minutes, but it forced me to really consider where I was and what happened there. But I’ll never forget the darkness, ever.
#37 House Hunting
I went house shopping with my wife a few years back. I found a foreclosed property in the town we were interested in. It was listed at about half of what a house with the same square footage in that town would be. We figured it could be a fixer-upper, but were willing to see it out. We wanted to buy into the location.
It was a nope at first sight, but we went in with our real estate agent to check it out. I’ve never seen a place in such disarray. It just felt off, like there was an overwhelming sadness throughout. Like the house was gone itself and needed to be buried. The worst of it was upstairs where, in one room, the ceiling had caved in and insulation had fallen. The other looked like either a offence had taken place. There were stains, too. We bought a different house.
#38 Defense Fort
An abandoned WWII-era coastal defense fort in Alaska. It was only accessible by sea, surrounded by rugged, forested terrain, and totally underground. The fog was rolling on as we went inside, and it quickly filled the main hallways and passages. The entire thing was just pitch black, echoing, and dripping wet.
Fog rolled through the halls, muffling every step you took through the labyrinthine bunker complex. The fog was so thick you couldn't even see trees, just white. When we were sufficiently spooked, we exited the fort to discover fresh bear scat and grizzly prints across the trail, which had not been there when we arrived. It was a tense hike back to our campsite.
#39 Zombie Rat
My friend and I were coming back from a concert one night and were taking a shortcut through this area that was being worked on. So, there wasn't really anyone around. As we crossed this small bridge, I looked up and saw what appeared to be a zombie rat jumping at my face. It scared my entire soul out of me. Turns out, someone had taken a mummified rat or squirrel and used wire to position it midair on that bridge. The creepiness of that, combined with the abandoned atmosphere of the construction area, was so creepy that we ran until we hit a busy street.
#40 North Carolina
Fayetteville, North Carolina. I’m from densely-populated Long Island. So, seeing a town as built up as mine with all the lights on then seeing only 20 cars for 12 hours was a bit off-putting. Trying to find a Walmart took us off the highway into dense woods and brought us to an empty warehouse where the guy was barely coherent in giving us directions.
#41 Going Dark
It was a bright and sunny Saturday morning. We were driving around to check out this house for rent in another neighborhood. As we entered the subdivision, everything became eerie, like it all felt wrong. The sun disappeared behind heavy clouds and we stopped seeing kids play in the street. In fact, the whole neighborhood looked empty. Save for one lady tending a food stand in front of the house. Oh, and there was also an empty lot with a dozen turkeys. They were all huddled up together under the shade of a tree. Waiting for rain perhaps? Either way, we booked it after looking at the house.
#42 Wooden Roller Coaster
I used to work security at a Six Flags theme park, sometimes working overnight. One night, I thought I saw someone or something under one of the older wooden roller coasters we had. It was about 3:00 a.m., pitch black, and creepy. To be fair, though, any amusement park at 3:00 a.m. is just creepy in general.
I got as far as I could in my security truck before I got out and walked on foot. I made it about 10 steps. It was dark, silent and I was underneath this wooden behemoth. My inner voice was telling me to get out of there. My minimum wage-earning self sprinted back to the truck, I peeled out, and never ventured under an old wooden roller coaster at 3:00 a.m. ever again.
#43 Here’s Looking at You
A trophy room. Why is it creepy? Well, because it had 10 portraits of the people who earned the trophies. They were the kind of portraits where, if you looked at the picture, the eyes always looked at you directly. It didn’t matter if you were moving or not, their gaze followed you. What made it worse is that it was late, I was alone, and it was totally silent.
#44 Incoming Spiders
My own house during and after a flood. We got about four feet of river water in our house as did our neighbors. The spiders were indescribable. We led our kids out of the living room window and I swear, the spiders covered the walls. Once the water started coming up, they headed for higher ground. They were everywhere.
I can feel them crawling on me as I type this. We left and came back three days later, but they had taken over the house. It was horrific. It's amazing how quickly nature takes over once people leave. There was nothing. No stores were open, no gas stations. We couldn’t even get mail for weeks because the roads were so bad. That was spooky enough without the spiders!
#45 Wild Dog
Sometime a few months back, my wife and I went sunset fishing. Where we went was around an hour's drive through winding foothill roads. We stayed until around midnight so that we could see bat swarms. We headed home at around 12:30 a.m. We saw several animals like turkeys, porcupines, a couple of deer... and this dog.
My headlights have no spread, so I could only see the road. The sides were pitch black and it was incredibly eerie how quiet and ominous it was. About 30 minutes from leaving our fishing spot, I noticed a dog running in the darkness. It was huge and at least 150 pounds. So, I stopped to make sure we wouldn't hit it. Just then, it also stopped and stared at me from the side of the road.
At first, the dog looked pretty cute. That is until I saw the red on his legs and dripping from his snout. He just stared at me, into my soul and dripped the whole time. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I was suddenly gripped with fear. The dark roads in the middle of Idaho are forever terrifying to me.
#46 Security Guard
In high school, my friends and I would go up to the local abandoned state mental hospital to explore. The rooms were mostly creepy from the state of decay they were in. There was a lot of graffiti, with things like “666” and bands' names (Tool, Marilyn Manson) spray-painted on the walls. The graffiti wasn’t creepy, just markings from other teenagers.
However, the creepiest area I saw were the underground tunnels. A security guard “caught” us on the property and told us to come back in a half-hour after the Statie did their rounds. We met up with him and he took us down into the tunnels that staff would have used to travel between buildings. I just remember how dark it was and he was the only one with a flashlight. The other creepy part was when he drove us around the property in his Dodge Caravan that had his cat in it. Dry cat food was all over the floor.
#47 Warped Reality
At my college, there's a weird "second and a half floor" annex between two floors of a building on campus. In the bathroom on that floor, there's a wooden panel in the wall that you can open. I went in once with some friends and it was a small alcove with a creepy-looking doll. There were also some drawings that looked like a kid made them. Very creepy. Reality is warped on that floor.
#48 The Radley House
When I was about six, I was in this neighborhood where a lot of people were friends and talked to each other. It wasn’t like a typical neighborhood where people ignore each other. It was very lovely and enjoyable. But, there was this one house in the middle of this beautiful neighborhood that was rundown, rotted, and disgusting.
The more I think about it, the more that house looked like a horror film. I once asked the neighbors about it and they said it had been like that for years. They also said to never go near it. They revealed that in the last five years, more than seven people moved in and out of that house because something drove them mad.
So one day, an elderly couple was moving out of it and curious six-year-old me wanted to investigate. They didn’t go outside much, so I wanted to help them pack. I asked if I could help and they agreed. I went inside to help bring stuff out and I saw a little boy who looked about seven. So, I walked outside and told the woman, “You never told me you had a son.” She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “We don’t.” I just ran back to my house and didn’t leave it for a while.
#49 Let’s Go to the Arcade
This one arcade as a child, had this wooden screaming head sculpture in the entrance. The place was filled with creepy coin-operated animatronic things and it was filled with these weird sculptures. It was supposed to be quirky and odd, but it was super scary. I huddled over in the least scary corner I could find, but was on the verge of losing my control and sobbed throughout the entire trip. I don't remember what the place was called.
#50 Doel, Belgium
Doel. It's an abandoned village near the nuclear reactors in Belgium. Belgium is very small, so an abandoned city is extremely uncommon. The people there had to leave due to the government wanting to clear their village to make room for something. Some people still live there, but most of the village is houses left to rot, filled with graffiti and broken windows. Lots of kids go there to vandalize things. I went there once and it had such a creepy vibe. Strange to imagine people used to live there and now it's just abandoned.
